Brown Skies
by Psychotype
Summary: The Citadel is about to explode and City 17 is in chaos while Amber, Sable, Coby and Ginger try to work together to escape the city of brown skies.
1. A Yellow Stone

City 17 burned and the Combine kept shooting.

It all seemed so stupid. So futile. Amber just wanted to scream, "What's the point?" She wanted to negotiate with them, telling them that they could help each other. For the first time the Citizens and the Combine Soldiers were in the same boat. They both had to face the dangers of Antlions. They both had to dodge falling rubble. They both were stuck in this damned city, the city that Amber had been in for most of her life; the city that she felt like she would die in.

And there was one person to blame. No, not Breen, although he seemed to be the obvious choice. Not Matthew, who gotten Amber even _more_ lost in this broken land due to his complete certainty that he knew the way out, which he didn't. Not even the leader of the Combine, whoever the hell that was. No, Amber didn't blame them.

She did, however, blame Gordon Freeman.

Why not? He started the Black Mesa Incident. He unleashed the Combine on Earth. When he came back, some 20 years later, he made sure everything went to hell again. Before he stepped off the train in City 17, life was hard for Amber, but predictable and bearable. She knew who to trust. She knew who to steer clear of. She knew how to avoid Civil Protection, and how to make it through the day by working hard and falling asleep early, the combination allowing her little time to think.

Shortly after the "great" Gordon Freeman arrived, there was the rebellion. The war, where everyone who could picked up a gun and fought alongside Freeman. Amber watched from her window as her lifelong friends and neighbors were shot down. Her family died helping Freeman fight Striders. Amber saw her mother fall to the ground, killed by friendly fire. She saw her brother be impaled through the chest with a Strider's foot. She saw this all from her hiding space on top of a roof. She hated herself for being too cowardly to fight, and hated Freeman for starting the battle in the first place.

Now this. Amber had been hiding from the fight in a small shed, listening to the sounds of war outside, when it blew apart. A bright flash. She had the sudden thought that this was nuclear war, an old fear she had when she was young, a Pre-Combine worry. It wasn't nuclear war, of course, seeing how the only one with the weapons now were the Combine. No, it was the top of the Citadel exploding. It was her old life; horrible, but still familiar, being shattered like the glass on the windows.

She couldn't ignore the sounds, not like she could ignore everything else. She heard the cliché sounds you expect to hear after such an explosion, such as screaming and the toppling of bricks, the sounds of chaos. But these noises came with ones Amber hadn't heard much before. The high pitched, screeching sound of Scanners, Dropships, and Manhacks, all rushing out of the Citadel. Something that sounded like air being let out of a tire, something being blown through the city. The deep, echoing _thump, thump, thump _of a Strider's three legged walk as it reduced tall buildings to rubble in seconds.

She wished she had stayed in the shed, now. She missed having shelter. She felt vulnerable out here. She had tugged a gun from Matthew's bloody fingers and grabbed some extra ammo from his pockets for protection, but still didn't feel safe. Amber didn't like using the small pistol, but she had to. She used it to protect herself from the Antlions and Manhacks.

She used it to protect herself from the Combine. Because, although City 17 burned, they just wouldn't stop shooting.

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A/N- I've decided to take a break from my Oneshot style of writing and try doing a

longer story. I'll update at least once a week, but sometimes I'll do a new post twice a week, depending on how much homework I have.

Also, I don't own Half-Life. I forgot to put this in my other Oneshots, so this goes for them as well. Also, this is set in Episode 1 if you didn't know.

Thanks for reading! There will be more action, more characters, and more fights in later and longer chapters. Please review, as this keeps me motivated and will lead to me writing faster and better.

Psychotype


	2. Blue, Red and Black

"Two Medkits?" Sable asked Ginger incredulously. "We got Striders, Gunships, Soldiers and Antlions on our asses and you pack two Medkits?"

"Like I was supposed to know we'd be rushed out of the building and be fighting for our lives," Ginger grumbled, fiddling with a bullet in between her fingers. She flipped it up, caught it, and twirled it around.

"Yeah, but Jesus, Ginger, we're in the Resistance. You're even a Medic! And you couldn't even pack enough Medkits to help us survive?"

"Give me a break, Sable. I packed more, but we already used three, and I lost the others when that Mini-Strider-thing attacked." 

"I saw that. Great job, klutz."  

"Oh, shut up girls," Coby, another City 17 resident that was traveling with them, responded. "Stop fighting for a few seconds while I try to find some shelter." He glanced quickly at the Strider two streets away from them. It seemed to be in pursuit of something else, but he couldn't tell what.

"Sir, yes sir!" Sable responded sarcastically. "C'mon, Cobalt, the Strider doesn't see us. Why bother stopping?"

"First, call me Cobalt again and I'm gonna shove this stun baton in your gut and turn it on. Second of all, maybe a house will have more ammo or food, a proper gun that I can use, or something that can help us get out of here. Maybe even Medkits." He stressed the last word and looked at Sable.

"The Strider's found something," said Ginger, who was watching the three-legged beast in the distance. "Or at least it's looking for something. Oh, wait, it's speeding up. It's probably got some poor civilian." She shook her head sadly.

Ginger and Sable had been lifelong partners in the Resistance, but not lifelong friends. They were polar opposites. Ginger was generally quiet, shy but kind, and preferred using stealth when fighting Combine. Sable was loud and sarcastic, and liked to be in the center of action. However, when the top of the Citadel blew and City 17 started to descend into chaos, they both agreed to save as many people as they could.

In an attempt to help rescue some civilians, Ginger and Sable had traveled in the direction of the Citadel. They had heard that a group of civilians were held up in a small shop up there. The only person they had managed to save so far was Coby, who they found being chased by what looked like a Mini-Strider with nothing to protect himself but a stun baton. Not only were they now lost from running like crazy, they had wasted most of their ammo trying to get that. . . that _thing_ dead.

"Here we go," Coby said. He had just opened the door to something that looked like it could have been a restaurant Pre-Combine. Now, however, the tables were all turned over to be used as shields; they were punctured with bullet holes. Several mattresses lay on the far corner.

"Perfect," Coby commented.

"Why?" asked Sable.

"Looks like there were some Rebels here once. They probably left all kinds of good stuff behind. Let's search."

Ginger, Sable, and Coby automatically went about checking every corner, nook and cranny of their new "base". They had done this one before, when all had to stay in an apartment to wait out a large group of Combine Soldiers.

"Oh yeah, look what I found!" Coby called out gleefully, finding a submachine gun in a beat-up wardrobe. "How about that, we even got ammo," he continued, opening a small drawer inside the wardrobe.

"Hey, we even got T.V.!" Ginger exclaimed. She flicked it on, and the screen turned blue. She frowned slightly, expecting to see the usual Breencast, but was instead faced with a blue screen. Where had she seen that before? Oh, right, City 14! All the Breencasts had turned blue after the Headcrabs attacked. . .

"What's on? Any good shows?" Coby asked jokingly.

"Only old reruns of soaps," Ginger replied with a smile. "Seriously though, looks like the service is out. No Breencast or anything."

"Gee, what surprise." Sable's sarcastic voice drifted in from the closet, where she was searching for a change of clothes. "I wonder if that has anything to do with the Citadel exploding."

"It hasn't really exploded yet," Coby muttered yet, abandoning his search to look out the one window the building had. Most of the ground around the Citadel was now completely barren, but the Citadel was still standing tall. It seemed as if only the top had exploded; the sky above it was blood red.

"Looks like it's gonna get worse though," replied Ginger, who had come over to watch outside the window with Coby. Before she could finish her thought, she heard the shot of a Strider, accompanied by the sound of a woman screaming.

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A/N- Have you noticed how all the character's names are colors? Amber (that one's obvious which color it's associated with), Ginger (associated with the color reddish orange) Sable (black) and Cobalt (I think that's supposed to be a type of blue). I don't know why I did that.


	3. The Color Spectrum

Amber was almost ten when the Black Mesa incident occurred, and now at the age of 30 she couldn't remember much about life Pre-Combine. Only fleeting sensations, memories dulled by the food, water, and stress that has been forced on her these past years.

She missed those few things she can recall. She missed lazy days, spent in a hammock with a soda and a good book, gently being blown by the wind. She missed waking up to an alarm clock playing her favorite song, instead of the siren the Citadel would blow every morning at dawn. She missed running barefoot, the wet grass coming up between her toes. She missed a fresh grass lawn in general. She missed the color green.

There was no green now, not room for green in a crumbling city. There is only enough room for large amounts of grey and brown that color the city. No bright colors there except the bright red splashes of blood; even the sky is dark.

Amber was trembling in the middle of the sea of grey, brown, and black. She was drowning in it. Her eye skipped from one depressing sight to another; there was a dead rebel, there was the Citadel, there was a mass amount of debris, and there was a Strider Amber was trying to hide from.

The one good thing about Striders is they can't catch you unaware. If you are killed by a Strider because you didn't notice it, you must be blind and deaf. Their sounds echo for miles, and they're as tall as most buildings. So Amber had easily seen it from far away. Unfortunately, it had seen her too, and started to _thump, thump, thump _to Amber.

It had now lost sight of Amber and was peering over mounds of dirt and in holes looking for her. She held her breath and pushed her back as close to the wall of the crater as it could go. As the thumping got closer, Amber realized that she'd get either crushed or shot at. Panic started to destroy her common sense, and without thinking, she got up and ran.

That strange, mechanic but still beast like sound of a Strider roaring reached Ambers ears, along with the sound of the Strider charging up it's gun. Instinctively, Amber dived, hitting the ground hard. She tried to finish of with a quick role to get back on her feet, but since had never been flexible she ended up face flat on the ground. The Strider's blast missed her by a couple of yards, but the following blue blast hit Amber's face with surprising heat. An involuntary scream escaped from Amber's mouth.

A sudden, sharp, stabbing pain started to come from below her eye. In shock, when she tried to get up, she stumbled over her own feet. Amber started to run clumsily due to her hard landing, and the Strider just kept coming closer and closer. She brought her hand up to her face, and it came away coated in blood. She must have scraped her cheek with a piece of sharp rock.

The Strider, who was gaining on Amber every second, was charging up its laser again. She closed her eyes, preparing for the end, when her hand was grabbed and she was jerked out of the way. But before she could catch her footing, the Strider's blast, which had hit a couple of feet away from Amber, knocked her off her feet.

She opened her eyes to see her savior. Before she could get a good look at the face, her hand was being tugged again and Amber had to get up and start blindly running with only the hand to guide her. Amber's other arm flailed wildly, and she knocked the pistol from her belt.

"Get on your feet! Hurry!" The voice confirmed that Amber's savior was a female. But before she could register any of what was happening to her, more voices joined in.

From her left, "I'll distract the Strider!" From her right, "Get back to the hideout!" From in front of her, "Run! RUN!"

The Strider made a sudden grunt. The female on Amber's left had a Pre-Combine hunting-rifle and had fired at the Strider. It changed it's course from running at Amber to running toward the woman with the hunting-rifle.

"STOP SHOOTING, GINGER, JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!" a man yelled to the woman, evidently named Ginger. Before Amber could see what was going to happen, the woman who had Amber's hand started dragging her to a small Pre-Combine restaurant.

"Get down," the woman hissed at Amber, and Amber ducked beneath a table which was turned on it's side. Another shot came from inside, and the woman sucked in her breath.

"Damn, if you got them killed, I will kick you out." The woman glared at Amber until Amber glanced away.

"It's not my fault," Amber grumbled. But she didn't need to worry, as the two other rebels triumphantly walked in the doorway.

"Got a bullet up through it's casing," Ginger said smiling. She held her rifle up proudly. "It's dead now."

"You did that with a Pre-Combine gun? Impressive," the other woman said.

"So, what's your name?" the man asked. "Are you a Rebel?"

"Uh, n-no," stuttered Amber, "I'm a Civilian. And my name's Amber."

"I'm Coby, that's Sable, and the girl with the gun's Ginger." Amber took a closer look at her saviors. Ginger had all of her hair up in a hat, except for a small red cowlick that came down from her forehead. She was wearing a torn Medic outfit with faded colors. She had very short legs; she was around 5'2. Sable looked as if she could be part Japanese. Her eyes were slanted, and her hair was jet black. The slanted eyes, however, were an unusual dark olive green. Coby, the man, was probably mixed-race. His skin was the same light brown as his hair, and his eyes were a dark blue. He was taller than Amber, but shorter than Sable, who was the tallest of them all.

"You got any weapons?" Sable asked, eyeing Amber's empty hands.

"No, I dropped my pistol when we were running from the Strider."

"Great," Sable said sarcastically. "Good job. You got any medkits or ammo?"

"Uh, I got some ammo," said Amber, taken aback by Sable's harsh response. She shoved her fingers into her pockets, only to find them empty. "Oh, I guess I don't." Sable scoffed.

"How useless are-" Sable started, but Ginger cut her off.

"Stop being such a jerk, Sable. Coby found a Magnum under a mattress, we'll give her that."

"Why would I need it though? Aren't we staying here?" Amber cut in.

"Are you crazy?" Coby asked. "This city's falling apart; there's no food and no water. It'd be suicide to stay here."

Amber was shocked; she had been a prisoner in City 17 her entire life, but the thought of leaving terrified her. Most of her memories were in this bleak city. Everyone she ever knew lived here. Even though the city was destroyed and all her friends were dead, she could not bring a picture of herself in another place to mind.

As if on cue, the T.V. which Ginger had forgotten to turn off came to life. The blue screen was replaced with an old man.

"Careful, Lamarr! These lamps are quite hot!" The old man exclaimed, holding a Headcrab.

"Dr. Kleiner!" Sable and Ginger both exclaimed at the same time.

"Who's he?" asked Coby and Amber simultaneously.

"He's part of the Resistance. He's a scientist who used to work at Black Mesa," Ginger responded. She and Sable both pulled up a chair and started to watch Kleiner speak.

"So, what part of City 17 did you live in?" Amber asked Coby over the sounds of Kleiner's speech.

"West side, pretty close to the Citadel. You?"

"South."

"That's pretty far. How'd you get here?"

"Bad guide," she responded, thinking of Matthew. What an idiot.

". . . First, as a matter of great urgency, if you find yourself still within the confines of City 17, you are well advised to leave the city at once by the fastest means available to you. . ." Kleiner's voice echoed out from the T.V., overlapping Amber's thoughts.

"Oh shit," Ginger cursed, "Kleiner says this city's gonna blow up soon. We gotta get out of here sooner then we thought."

"Damn," Coby muttered. "That means we can't rest at all. We gotta keep going." For the first time, he looked at Amber closely and noticed the scratch under her eye. "I think I saw some bandages upstairs, if you want to patch up."

Once Amber was upstairs, Sable stood up and walked towards Coby.

"Come here, Ginger, I want to talk about the girl," she whispered in a harsh tone.

"You mean Amber?"

"Yeah, I don't like the looks of her. You sure you want to drag her around? We barely know her, and she looks pathetic."

"Hey," Coby interjected, "You barely knew me when you took me on. Why not her?"

"You're different, Cobalt," Sable said, earning glares from Coby. "You can handle yourself. She can't hold onto a gun."

"You're just too judgmental, Sable," Ginger replied. "You've been wrong before. I've worked with you for ten years now, so I would know." Sable was about to reply, but was cut short when Amber came downstairs with a bandage beneath her eye.

"Anyway, as I was saying, we should get out of here now," Sable said in a loud, wooden, unconvincing voice. Ginger couldn't help but roll her eyes at Sable's bad acting.

"Grab the Magnum under the mattress, Amber," Coby told her. "I'll pack up the remaining ammo."

"Don't forget the Medkits," Sable reminded, glaring at Ginger. "We only have two."

Ginger rolled her eyes again.

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A/N- I could probably write something funny and witty here, but it's almost midnight and I'm tired and have headache and anything that sounds witty to me now will not sound witty in the morning, and it's too much of a bother to replace a document in an attempt to cover up a pathetic joke, and I've used "and" way too many times now because most parts of my brain have already gone to sleep, including the writing and humor part (arguably though, the humor parts don't work often anyway).

You are free to start laughing at the screen as if I wrote something particularly humorous, though.


End file.
